Winter is once again coming to the southern Alberta region and Mirage Landscaping of Calgary would like to remind every commercial building owner that you can leverage the extra slip and fall safety that professional snow removal and ice managementaffords by ensuring your lot and walks are in good repair now.

Before the snow flies and the ice builds, take an in depth tour of your premises and identify these following potential trouble spots to correct before cold temperatures make it far too late and far more difficult.

Are Your Lot and Walks Clean?

Before the first deep snow, make sure to sweep off your sidewalks and clear out your gutters. Small gravel and latent leaves make it harder to shovel pathways.

Is Your Landscaping Trimmed Back?

Now is the time to have trees with structurally suspect branches trimmed away so that they won’t snap under a snow load. An additional item to take into consideration are any hedges or bushes that adorn or border your parking lot. They may look as if they don’t need to be trimmed down for better driver visibility and pedestrian safety, but look again and imagine a half metre of snow accumulated on top of them. Consider having all of your hedges and shrubs pruned now.

Are Your Walks And Lot In Good Repair?

Potholes, frost heaves, cracks in concrete and asphalt alike are all forms of water damage. Whether the result of summer rains getting into cracks in your asphalt and eroding the substrate, causing potholes to form under the weight of vehicular traffic, or just the freeze/thaw cycle causing your sidewalk to become uneven, these concerns merit addressing now to protect against slip and fall accidents in the future.

Are Your Lighting, Striping, and Signage Adequately Bright?

With the longer darkness of winter, good lighting is critical to visitor and employee safety. Not only does good lighting make it easier to see developing faults in the surface of the asphalt, it makes it easier to see where to NOT step in an accumulation of tire driven slush, or upon a sheen of black ice, and cuts down on criminal activity.

Likewise, strong paint demarcations for parking lot spaces, arrows for directional flow through the lot, and vibrant stop signs, disabled parking markers and other signage cut down on driver confusion and minor vehicular accidents that could be partially blamed upon the condition of your parking lot. Likewise, if you have no parking areas, loading zones, raised parking curbs, or shopping cart corrals, make sure those are brightly painted or otherwise highly visible.